Tag: serverless

You clever dog. You’ve rooted it out! It turns out when you build things with serverless technology you’re still using servers. Pardon the patronizing tone there, I’ve seen one-too-many hot takes at this point where someone points this fact out and trots away triumphantly.

And yes, because serverless still involves servers, the term might be a bit disingenuous to some. You could be forgiven for thinking that serverless meant technologies like web workers, which use the client to do things you might have otherwise done on a server and is where the term serverless was headed. Alas, it is not.

What serverless really means:

Using other people’s servers instead of running your own. You’re probably already doing that, but serverless takes it to another level where you have no control over the server outside of telling it to run a bit of code.

You don’t need to think about scaling — that’s the serverless provider’s problem.

You are only paying per execution of your code and not some fixed cost per time.

You only worry about your code being misused, but not the security of the server itself.

We’re mostly talking about Cloud Functions above, but I’d argue the serverless movement involves anything that allows you to work from static hosting and leverage services to help you with functionality. For example, even putting a Google Form on a static site is within the serverless spirit.

Serverless is about outsourcing a little bit more of your project to companies that are incentivized to do it well. My hope is that someday we can have a conversation about serverless without having to tread this ground every time and spat about the term. I suspect we will. I think we’re almost over the term the cloud as an industry and we’ll jump this hurdle too. It’s worth it when a single word successfully evokes a whole ecosystem.

Wanna know more about serverless? Here’s the tag on CSS-Trick where we’ve talked about it a bunch.

The post PSA: Yes, Serverless Still Involves Servers. appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

If you don’t already know of it, Todd Motto has this great list of public APIs. It’s awesome if you’re trying out a new framework or new layout pattern and want to hit the ground running without fussing with the content.

But what if you want or need to make your own API? Serverless can help create a nice one for data you’d like to expose for use.

Serverless really shines for this use case, and hopefully this post makes it clear why. In a non-serverless paradigm, we have to pick something like express, we have to set up endpoints, we have to give your web server secured access to your database server, you have to deploy it, etc. In contrast, here we’ll be able to create an API in a few button clicks, with minor modifications.

Here’s the inspiration for this tutorial: I’ve been building a finder to search for new cocktails and grab random one. I originally started using ae public API but realized quickly that I found the contents limiting and wanted to shape my own.

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I’m going to use Azure for these examples but it is possible to accomplish what we’re doing here with other cloud providers as well.

Make the Function

To get started, if you haven’t already, create a free Azure trial account. Then go to the portal: preview.portal.azure.com.

Next, we’ll hit the plus sign at the top left and select Serverless Function App from the list. We can then fill in the new name of our function and some options. It will pick up our resource group, subscription, and create a storage account from defaults. It will also use the location data from the resource group. So, happily, it’s pretty easy to populate the data.

Next, we’ll create a new function using HTTP Trigger, and go to the Integrate tab to perform some actions:

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What we did was:

Give the route template a name

Change the authorization level to “Anonymous”

Change the allowed HTTP methods to “Selected Method”

Select “GET” for the selected method and unchecked everything else

Now, if we get the function URL from the top right of our function, we’ll get this:

There’s more information in this blog post, including API unification with Function Proxies. You can also use custom domains, not covered here.

OK, now that that initial part is all set up, let’s find a place to host our data.

Storing the data with CosmosDB

There are a number of ways to store the data for our function. I wanted to use Cosmos because it has one-click integration, making for a pretty low-friction choice. Get a free account here. Once you’re in the portal, we’ll go to the plus sign in the top left to create a new service and this time select “CosmosDB.” In this case, we chose the SQL version.

We have a few options for how to create our documents in the database. We’re merely making a small example for demo purposes, so we can manually create them by going to Data Explorer in the sidebar. In there, I made a database called CocktailFinder, a collection called Cocktails, and added each document. For our Partition Key, we’ll use /id.

In real practice, you’d probably either want to upload a JSON file by clicking the “Upload JSON” button or follow this article for how to create the files with the CLI.

And here is the example with all three that we’ve created, and what Cosmos adds in:

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Have the function surface the data

OK, now we’ve got some dummy data to work with, so let’s connect it to our serverless function so we can finish up our API!

If we go back to our function in the portal and click Integrate in the sidebar again, there’s a middle column that called Inputs. Here, we can click on the plus that says “+ New Inputs” and a few options come up. We’ll click the CosmosDB option and “Create.”

A prompt will come up that asks us to provide information about our Database and Collection. If you recall, the databaseName was CocktailFinder and the collectionName was Cocktails. We also want to use the same partitionKey which was /id. We’ll use all the other defaults.

Now if we go to our function.jso, you can see that it’s now been updated with:

CORS!

Can’t forget the axios call. I have a really barebones CodePen implementation so that you can see how that might work. In Vue, we’re hooking into the created lifecycle method and making the GET request, in order to output the JSON data to the page.

See the Pen Show API Output, beginning of Vue.js integration by Sarah Drasner (@sdras) on CodePen.

From here, you have all that data to play with, and you can store whatever you like in whatever form you fancy. You can use something like Vue, React, or Angular to create interfaces with the content we stored in our database, and our serverless function creates the API for us. The sky is the limit to what we can create! 🎉

Simona Cotin did a great talk at Microsoft Build about Serverless technologies, called “Build Node APIs Using Serverless.” In this talk, she addresses pretty much every major gotcha that you might run into while creating Serverless infrastructure for JavaScript applications. Some of the topics included, but are not limited to:

CORS

Local Debugging with VS Code

Installing npm packages

Configuring REST-like URLs

Saving environment variables

All in all, it’s one of the best talks on Serverless I’ve seen, and if you’re interested in this topic, then I highly suggest giving it a watch.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

The post Build Nodejs APIs Using Serverless appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

I like to jog. Sometimes it’s cold out. Sometimes it’s cold out, but it looks like it isn’t. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping. Then you step outside in shorts and a t-shirt and realize you have roughly 2 minutes before exposure sets in.

I decided to solve this first world problem using a lightbulb to display a certain color based on what the temperature outside is. It works better than I expected, and that’s saying something because usually nothing works out like I want it to.

This was a fun project to build, and since it is essentially a hosted service running on a timer, it’s a perfect use case for Serverless.

Now you might be thinking, “um, wouldn’t it be easier to just check the weather?” Well it would, but then I wouldn’t have an excuse to buy an expensive lightbulb or write an article with the word “Serverless.”

So let’s look at how you can build your own Weather Bulb. The final code is not complicated, but it does have some interesting pieces that are worth noting. By the way, did I mention that it’s Serverless?

Building the Weather Bulb

The first thing you are going to need is the bulb. You can’t have a Weather Bulb sans bulb. Say the word “bulb” out loud about 10 times and you’ll notice what a bizarre word it is. Bulb, bulb, bulb, bulb — see? Weird.

I am using the LIFX Mini Color. It’s not *too* expensive, but more importantly, it’s got an API that is wide open.

The API has two methods of authentication. The first contains the word “OAuth” and I’m already sorry that you had to read that. Don’t worry, there is an easier way that doesn’t involve OAu…. that which won’t be named.

The second way is to register an application with LIFX. You get back a key and all you have to do is pass that key with any HTTP request. That’s what I’m using for this demo.

For instance, if we wanted to change the bulb color to blue, we can just pass color: blue to the /state endpoint.

The API supports a few different color formats, including named colors (like red, blue), hex values, RBG, Kevlin, hue brightness and saturation. This is important because it factors into what proved to be the hardest part of this project: turning temperature into color.

Representing Temperature With Color

If you’ve ever watched a weather report, you’ll be familiar with the way that meteorology represents weather conditions with color on a map.

Usually, this is done to visualize precipitation. You have probably seen that ominous green strip of storms bearing down on you on a weather map while you try to figure out if you should get in the bathtub because you’re in the path of a tornado. Or maybe that’s just all of us unlucky souls here in America’s Tornado Alley.

Color is also used to represent temperature. This is precisely what I wanted to do with the bulb. The tough thing is that there doesn’t seem to be a standardized way to do this. Some maps show it as solid colors in bands. In this case blue might represent the band from 0℉ – 32℉.

Others have it as a gradient scale which is more precise. This is what I was after for the Weather Bulb.

My first stab at solving this was just to Google “temperature color scale” and other various iterations of that search term. I got back a lot of information about Kelvin.

Kelvin is a representation of the temperature of a color. Literally. For any light source (light bulb, the sun, ect) the actual temperature of that source will affect the color of the light it emits. A fire burns a yellowish red color. The hotter that fire gets, the more it moves towards white. Hence the saying, “white hot”. So if someone ever says “red hot,” you can correct them in front of everyone because who doesn’t love a pedantic jerk?

The LIFX bulb supports Kelvin, so you might think that this would work. After all, this is the Kelvin scale….

The problem is that there is simply not enough color variation because these are not actual colors, but rather the tinge of color that a light is emitting based on it’s “temperature.” Here is the Kelvin color wheel that comes with the LIFX app.

These colors are barely distinguishable from one another on the bulb. Not exactly what I was after.

That leaves me with trying to convert the color to either Hex, RGB or some other format. This is tough because where do you begin? I spent an embarrassing amount of time adjust RGB scale values between blue for cold (0, 0, 255) and red for hot (255, 0, 0). It was about this time that it dawned on me that maybe HSL would be a better way to go here. Why? Because hue is a whole lot easier to understand.

Hue

Hue is a representation of color on a scale between 0 and 360. This is why we often see color represented on a wheel (360°). That’s a vast oversimplification, but unless you want me to start talking about wavelengths, let’s go with that definition.

The hue color wheel looks like this….

If we flatten it out, it’s easier to reason about.

We’re ready to convert temperature to color. The first thing we need to do is figure out a set temperature range. I went with 0℉ to 100℉. We can’t work with infinite temperature color combinations. Numbers go on forever, colors do not. It can only get so hot before our bulb is just bright red all the time, and that’s 100℉. The same is true for cold.

If light blue represents 0℉, I can start at about the 200 mark on the hue scale. Red will represent 100℉. You can see that red is at both extremes, so I can move either left OR right, depending on what colors I want to use to represent the temperature. It’s not the same as the colors they use in actual weather programs, but who cares? Obviously not me.

I chose to go right because there is no pink on the left and pink is my favorite color. I also felt like pink represents warm a bit better than green. Green is rain and tornadoes.

Now we can back into a hue based on temperature. Ready? Here we go.

Let’s pretend it’s a brisk 50℉ outside.

If 100℉ is the hottest we go (360) and 0℉ is the coldest (200), then we have a color scale of 160 points. To figure out where in that 160 point range we need to be, we can divide the current temperature by the upper bound of 100℉ which will give us the exact percentage we need to move in our range, or 50%. If we move 50% of the way into a 160 point range, that leaves us at 80. Since we are starting at 200, that gives us a hue of 280.

That sounds complicated, but only because word problems in math SUCK. Here’s how the code looks when it’s all said and done…

let hue = 200 + (160 * ( temperature / 100 ));

OK! We’ve got a dynamic color scale based on hue, and wouldn’t you know it, we can just pass the hue to LIFX as simply as we pass a named color.

Now we just need to find out what the current temperature is, back into a hue and do that every few minutes. Serverless, here we come!

Serverless Timer Functions

Serverless is all the rage. It’s like HTML5 used to be: it doesn’t matter what it is, it only matters that you know the word and are not afraid to use it in a blog post.

For this example, we’ll use Azure Functions because there is support for timer triggers, and we can test those timer triggers locally before we deploy using VS Code. One of the things about Serverless that irritates me to no end is when I can’t debug it locally.

Using the Azure Functions Core Tools and the Azure Functions Extension for VS Code, I can create a new Serverless project and select a Timer Trigger.

Timer Triggers in Azure Functions are specified as Cron Expressions. Don’t worry, I didn’t know what that was either.

Cron Expressions allow you to get very specific with interval definition. Cron breaks things down into second, minute, hour, day, month, year. So if you wanted to run something every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year, your expression would look like this…

* * * * * *

If you wanted to run it every day at 10:15, it would look like this…

* 15 10 * * *

If you wanted to run it every 5 minutes (which is what Azure defaults to), you specify that by saying “when minutes is divisible by 5.”

0 */5 * * * *

For the purposes of this function, we set it to 2 minutes.

I am using a 2 minute interval because that’s how often we can call the weather API for free 💰.

Getting the Forecast From DarkSky

DarkSky has a wonderful weather API that you can call up to 1,000 times per day for free. If there are 1,440 minutes in a day (and there are), that means we can call DarkSky every 1.44 minutes per day and stay in the free zone. I just rounded up to 2 minutes because temperature doesn’t change that fast.

This is what our function looks like when we call the DarkSky API. All of my tokens, keys, latitude and longitude settings are in environment variables so they aren’t hardcoded. Those are set in the local.settings.json file. I used axios for my HTTP requests because it is a magical, magical package.

Now that I have the temperature, I need to call the LIFX API. And wouldn’t you know it, someone has already created an npm package to do this called lifx-http-api. This is why you love JavaScript.

Setting the Bulb Hue

After the weather result comes back, I need to use the LIFX API instance and call the setState method. This method returns a promise which means that we need to nest promises. Nesting promises can get out of hand and could land us right back in callback hell, which is what we’re trying to avoid with promises in the first place.

Instead, we’ll handle the first promise and then return Promise.all which we can handle at another top-level then. This just prevents us from nesting then statements.

Deploying Weather Bulb

I can create a new Functions project from the VS Code extension.

I can right-click that to “Open in portal” where I can define a deployment source so it sucks my code in from Github and deploys it. This is ideal because now whenever I push a change to Github, my application automatically gets redeployed.

All Hail the Weather Bulb

Now just sit back and behold the soft glow of the Weather Bulb! Why look at the actual temperature when you can look at this beautiful shade of hot pink instead?

Can you guess what the temperature is based on what you know from this article? The person who leaves a comment and gets the closest will get a free LIFX lightbulb from me (because I ❤️ all of you), or the cost of the bulb if you are outside the U.S. (~$40).

You can grab all of the code for this project from Github.

The post Displaying the Weather With Serverless and Colors appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

This is the fourth post in a four-part series. In Part one, we set up a serverless Stripe function on Azure. Part two covered how we hosted the function on Github. The third part covered Stripe Elements in Vue. This last post shows how to configure the checkout component and make the shopping cart fully functional.

Article Series:

Setup and Testing

Stripe Function and Hosting

Application and Checkout Component

Configure the Checkout Component (This Post)

As a reminder, here’s where we are in our application at this point:

Configuring the Checkout Component

We have to do a few things to adjust the component in order for it to meet our needs:

Make sure the form is only displaying if we haven’t submitted it—we’ll deal with the logic for this in our pay method in a moment

Allow the form to take a customer’s email address in case something is wrong with the order.

Disable the submit button until the required email address is provided

Finally and most importantly, change to our testing key

Here’s our updated checkout component with the changes to the original code highlighted:

There are a number of things we need to store and use for this component, so let’s add them to data or bring them in as props. The props that we need from our parent component will be total and success. We’ll need the total amount of the purchase so we can send it to Stripe, and the success will be something we need to coordinate between this component and the parent, because both components need to know if the payment was successful. I write out the datatypes as well as a default for my props.

Next, the data we need to store will be the stripeEmail we collected from the form, stripeOptions that I left in to show you can configure some options for your form, as well as status and response that we’ll get from communicating with the server and Stripe. We also want to hold whether or not the form was submitted, and whether the form was completed for enabling and disabling the submit button, which can both be booleans.

Now for the magic! We have everything we need—we just need to alter our pay() method, which will do all the heavy lifting for us. I’m going to use Axios for this, which will receive and transform the data:

npm i axios --save

…or using Yarn:

yarn add axios

If you’re not familiar with Axios and what it does, check out this article for some background information.

It allows us to track whether we’ve submitted the form or not, with this.submitted

It uses Axios to post to our function. We got this URL from going to where the function lives in the portal, and clicking “Get Function URL” on the right side of the screen.

It sends the email, token, and total to the serverless function

If it’s successful, it changes the status to success, commits to our Vuex store, uses a mutation to clear our cart, and emits to the parent cart component that the payment was successful. It also logs the response to the console, though this is for educational purposes and should be deleted in production.

If it errors, it changes the status to failure, and logs the error response for help with debugging

If the payment fails, which we’ll know from our status, we need to let the user know something went wrong, clear our cart, and allow them to try again. In our template:

If the payment succeeds, we will show a loading component, that will play an SVG animation until we hear back from the server. Sometimes this can take a couple of seconds, so it’s important that our animation make sense if it is seen for a short or long amount of time, and can loop as necessary.

If we have items in our cart, we show the cart. If the cart is empty and the success is false, we’ll let them know that their cart is empty. Otherwise, if the checkout has just been processed, we’ll let them know that everything has been executed successfully!

We are now here:

In the AppSuccess.vue component, we have a small SVG animation designed to make them feel good about the purchase:

See the Pen success by Sarah Drasner (@sdras) on CodePen.

(You may have to hit “Rerun” to replay the animation.)

We also put a small timer in the mounted() lifecycle hook:

window.setTimeout(() => this.$emit('restartCart'), 3000);

This will show the success for three seconds while they read it then kick off the restartCart that was shown in the component above. This allows us to reset the cart in case they would like to continue shopping.

Conclusion

You learned how to make a serverless function, host it on Github, add required dependencies, communicate with Stripe, set up a Shopping Cart in a Vue application, establish a connection with the serverless function and Stripe, and handle the logic for all of the cart states. Whew, way to go!

It’s worth mentioning that the demo app we looked at is a sample application built for specifically for this purpose of this tutorial. There are a number of steps you’d want to go through for a production site, including testing, building the app’s dist folder, and using real Stripe keys. There are also so many ways to set this up, Serverless functions can be so flexible in tandem with something like Vue. Hopefully this gets you on track and saves you time as you try it out yourself.

Creating a Vue.js Serverless Checkout Form: Configure the Checkout Component is a post from CSS-Tricks

This is the third post in a four-part series. In part one, we set up a serverless Stripe function on Azure. Part two covered how we hosted the function on Github. This post will focus on wiring everything up as a Vue.js application.

Article Series:

Setup and Testing

Stripe Function and Hosting

Application and Checkout Component (This Post)

Configure the Checkout Component

Stripe has a number of ways to build out a checkout form, the most basic being a single button on the page that you trigger to pull up their custom modal. There’s a repo and component for this, but as easy as that is to implement (it’s probably the most simple way to do it), I wanted a little more customization and wanted the checkout flow to be part of the page and application. This approach wouldn’t work for my needs.

Stripe Elements

Stripe also offers a thing called Elements. Elements allow you to integrate Stripe’s payment system into your own checkout form and style it like your own site for a cohesive experience. It won’t feel like you’re using a third party plugin. They do have some pre-styled examples if you prefer something you can use right out of the box.

Luckily for us, there’s a really nice repo with a Vue version of Stripe Elements called vue-stripe-elements. The repo’s documentation is really nice, so you could check that out. Here’s how I put it to use:

npm i vue-stripe-elements-plus --save

…or using Yarn:

yarn add vue-stripe-elements-plus

Now let’s talk about our cart and integrate it.

The Cart

Here’s what everything looks like as a birds eye view of the application. We’ve already addressed the function and stripe pieces, now let’s dig into the application itself.

We’re not going to go through setting up the entire application in these posts, rather just the Cart and Checkout. I’d suggest checking out the following links before continuing if you need to catch up on the basics of Vue, Vuex, and Nuxt:

CSS-Tricks Vue Guide

Simple Server Side Rendering, Routing, and Page Transitions with Nuxt.js

In our general store set up with Vuex, we hold a manifest of all of our product data used to populate the pages with items. We’ll also use that information to populate a (currently empty) cart object where items can be added for purchase. We’ll use that data on a page called `Cart.vue` in the pages directory. If you’re unfamiliar with Nuxt.js, it allows us to use .vue components as pages by creating them in this pages directory. We can still populate these pages with components from the components directory to create a more modular application. Here are the parts we’re discussing now:

We’ll need two pieces of information from that store in Vuex: the contents of the cart and the cartTotal.

We’ll use computed properties in pages/Cart.vue to fetch that information so that we can cache and use them in the cart.

The first thing that we’ll do is see if the cart has items in it. If it does, then we need to check that the payment hasn’t already been processed. We need to do this because there’s no need to display a checkout form if there are no items in the cart or if payment has already been processed for the items that were added.

We’re using a filter to format the prices in US dollars. I format them this way instead of hardcoding them in case I need to support other currencies in the future.

filters: { usdollar: function(value) { return `$${value}`; }
}

Setting up the Checkout Component

Now we’re going to create our checkout component, which will hold all of the Stripe checkout logic and connect to the serverless function we set up in Part Two. We’ll register the component in the Cart.vue file:

Next Up…

So far, this is what the component looks like out of the box. We’re going to have to update this component a bit to fit our needs, but not too much. Stay tuned tomorrow for the final installment when we connect our component to our serverless function and finish up the checkout!

Article Series:

Setup and Testing

Stripe Function and Hosting

Application and Checkout Component (This Post)

Configure the Checkout Component

Creating a Vue.js Serverless Checkout Form: Application and Checkout Component is a post from CSS-Tricks

We’re now in the second post of a four-part series where we’re creating a checkout form application in Vue.js that can accept payments via the Stripe API. In part one, we looked at the concept of serverless functions, set one up in Azure, and connected it to a Stripe account. In this post, we’ll focus on setting up Stripe as a serverless function and hosting it all on Github.

Article Series:

Setup and Testing

Stripe Function and Hosting (This Post)

Application and Checkout Component

Configure the Checkout Component

First, we’re going write our function and test it out in the portal, but eventually we’re going to move it over to Github and have Azure pull in the code. I’ll explain why we do this in a moment.

For now, in order to get it working and testable, we’re going to write it in the portal and fill in the request body to perform the test. But we need to know what Stripe will expect from us first.

Dun dun dun…

Working With Stripe as a Serverless Function

If you check out Stripe’s documentation, you can see that we’ll need to grab the Stripe token in the dashboard. This will eventually mirror the POST parameters submitted by our form. Stripe makes it easy, so it’s fairly straightforward to use their library for the server-side function with Express:

We won’t need to set up all of Node and Express for this, though, as what we really need is the amount, the currency, the description, and the token, which we can integrate with the testing code we were provided earlier in the portal’s view of our function. So, let’s head over to the Azure portal where our function lives and update that default testing code to accept the parameters we need for Stripe, and also populate the request.body in the test panel.

If we have a request body, an email, and a token, then let’s get started. We’ll create a customer from the email and then use that customer to create the Stripe charges, passing in the amount of the charge as we do so.

We also want to test if this all completed successfully, or if it errored out. If it did error, we need to log what that error is. We’ll also see if the whole thing errored entirely, making sure we’re logging everything appropriately along the way.

You’ll note that I log a lot. I think it’s not enough to know that something has errored. I want to know when the error happened and why so that I can track it down. This makes it much easier to debug if something were to go wrong.

In the testing area on the right side of the portal, we’ll fill the request.body with the stripeEmail, stripeToken (a testing token in this case), and some random amount for the charge. When we run this, we can see that it works! We get a 200 OK Status, and we’ve logged This has been completed in the output.

Testing the request body parameters with the actual function in Azure.

Github-Hosted Serverless Function

Let’s put everything in Github now that it’s working. One big reason we want to do this is because our function will have a dependency on Stripe’s library. If you head over to the sample-stripe-handler repo I’ve created for this tutorial, you’ll see a package.json file. The most important lines in that file are these:

"dependencies": { "stripe": "^5.3.0"
}

This tells the function to pull in the correct version of the Stripe API that we need to use in order for our app to properly function. As a note, you could also use this method to write other kinds of functions using other libraries. This means the possibilities for what to create are endless!

We’ll pull everything from our function into this repo. This includes the function itself, the package.json file, as well as the contents of the function.json file that you’ll see in the “View Files” tab on the right in the Azure portal.

Once we have that all in ready to go in a Github repo, we’ll head back over to the Azure portal, because now we have to let Azure know that we’d like to use this repo to host our function instead of our test. We can still test our function inside the portal—we just won’t be able to edit it via the GUI anymore.

Click on the “Platform Features” tab and select the “Deployment Options” item.

From here, click “Settings” then “Choose source” and a number of options will be provided. I’m going to choose Github because that’s where I want to host mine, but you can see that there are a lot of other ways we could have done this.

Deployment settings source options, including Github.

Once Github has been selected, you will be able to configure which repo you would like to use as your deployment source. I chose the sample-stripe-handler repo that we created earlier.

Configuring Github as the deployment source.

After we’ve done this and it’s loaded, you’ll be taken to a “Deployments” screen that shows the last commit that you made to the repo. That means everything’s working correctly!

Let’s test this a little further. My function didn’t work properly the first time because I was using ES6. I could have added in Babel, but I just converted it back to ES5 and pushed to the master branch. You can see the function.json becomes inactive as the last deployment, and my latest commit message—which is mostly me grumbling—is now the latest deploy! Awesome.

We can’t be too careful so, to check that these tests did indeed work, I’m going to head over to the Stripe dashboard. Sure enough, there are testing charges showing up in our dashboard 😀

One last thing!

We would be remiss to exclude our good friend CORS, which we need to properly enable for everything to communicate as it should. Let’s go to our function in the dashboard, and select CORS:

In the prompt that appears, we’ll whitelist our localhost dev server, as well as our final URL for the site. Voila! We’re all set.

Next Up…

We got a lot done in this post! Next, we’ll want to learn how to move away from testing only within the function and get this sucker communicating freely with a checkout experience that we’ll build within a Vue.js application. Stay tuned!

Article Series:

Setup and Testing

Stripe Function and Hosting (This Post)

Application and Checkout Component

Configure the Checkout Component

Creating a Vue.js Serverless Checkout Form: Stripe Function and Hosting is a post from CSS-Tricks

There comes a time in any young app’s life when it will have to monetize. There are a number of ways to become profitable, but accepting cash is a surefire way to make this more direct. In this four-part tutorial, we’ll go over how to set up a serverless function, make it talk to the Stripe API, and connect it to a checkout form that is setup as a Vue application. This may sound daunting, but it’s actually pretty straightforward! Let’s dig in.

Article Series:

Setup and Testing (This Post)

Stripe Function and Hosting

Application and Checkout Component

Configure the Checkout Component

What is Serverless?

We’ve covered serverless concepts before but, in case you haven’t read that article, let’s talk for a minute about what we mean by “serverless” because it’s a bit of a misnomer.

The promise of serverless is to spend less time setting up and maintaining a server. You’re essentially letting the service handle maintenance and scaling for you, and you boil what you need down to functions that run certain code when a request is made. For this reason, people may refer to this as Azure to help us with this. The portal and Github integration are pretty quick to manipulate, as long as you know where to go. So by all means, let’s make it happen!

Sign up for Stripe

First, we’ll create a Stripe account. We verify our new account via email and then we’ll head over to the API section, where we can retrieve two keys. You’ll note that we’re in test mode right now, which is good! We’ll keep it like that for testing, and unveil the testing key token to use while we set up the application.

Once you’re signed in, go to the API section of your dashboard to retrieve your key.

The Stripe API screen

You may also want to add a phone number to your account for 2 factor auth as well.

Setting up Our Serverless Function in the Azure Portal

First, we’ll head over to the portal, (or if you don’t already have an account, you can sign up for a free trial here) and select New > Serverless Function

Setting up a new Servless Function in Azure

When we click on the Serverless Function app, we’ll be taken to a panel that asks for details to help with the setup. As you can see in the screenshot above, it will autofill most of the fields just from the app name, but let’s go over some of these options quickly:

Add in a unique name

A Resource Group (if you don’t already have one, create one)

I use the Windows OS because the Linux is still in preview, so Windows will be more stable

I use the Consumption Plan because this is the one that will have payments that scale with the use, and it will also scale automatically. The other option, App Service Plan, is good for people who prefer everything to be a bit more manual.

Choose a location that is close to your customer base, or a midpoint between two customer bases

Choose a storage, or create one as I’ve done

I’ll also check Pin to Dashboard because I want to be able to retrieve my function quickly later

This will bring you back to the main portal dashboard and let you know that your function is deploying. Once it’s done, it take you to a main screen that has all of your options. From here, we’ll want to create our function, and it will be an HTTP trigger.

We’ll select Functions under our function name, and you’ll see a little table with a plus that says “New Function”:

Once we click here, we have a few options on what we can create. We’ll pick HTTP Trigger:

We’ll be able to select the language (pick “JavaScript”) and then “Create”:

The Default Testing Function

From here, we’re given a default testing function which helps us see how this all works. If we open all of these panels and hit the Run button, we’ll see the output in logs.

You’ll see here that we’re passing in the context. That allows us to log, which will be shown in the lowest panel below. In the Test panel on the right, we can pass in a request body that can be used to test our application. When it runs, we see the output with a 200 status and know that everything is working. We also have a context.log for the case that it gives us a 400 error. If you’d like to play around with a serverless function and see it in action for yourself, you can create one with a free trial account.

Next Up…

Now that we have the base of our serverless function, let’s set up what we’ll need to communicate with Stripe! More to come in the next post in this series.

Article Series:

Setup and Testing (This Post)

Stripe Function and Hosting

Application and Checkout Component

Configure the Checkout Component

Creating a Vue.js Serverless Checkout Form: Setup and Testing is a post from CSS-Tricks